


Acts of Providence

by eirabach



Series: Testaments [3]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Like quite a lot of angst, Pre-Series, Thunderbirds are Go! - Freeform, pre-episode The Long Reach, well kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22927336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: Before they found their father, they had to lose him.[originally posted on tumblr for gumnut-logic's fabfivefeb prompt challenge]
Relationships: Penelope Creighton-Ward/Gordon Tracy
Series: Testaments [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1933972
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	1. Gordon (1)

The night that Jeff Tracy took humanity’s first step on the surface of Mars, he had three little boys watching at home. Gordon, he liked to say, was born of the fall out. A child created in a whirlwind of press tours and ticker tape and eventually brought home to that quiet little homestead that would never be truly quiet or homely again. 

By the time Gordon became a Tracy being a Tracy _mattered_. And sure money’s great and influence is better, but Gordon’s sixteen years old with sunlight in his hair and his eyes and his soul, and for him, for him the best part of being a Tracy is that no one ever tells you you _can’t_.

Not that Gordon would listen if they did.

Because the other important thing to know about being a Tracy, is that Gordon isn’t very good at it.

He’s uninterested in physics or engineering or math. He has minimal desire to blow things up or shoot people or study space dust. He likes a party and he loves people, but he’s miserable in a cummerbund and he kinda never understood capitalism.

When you’re fourth, you gotta find your own way to be first. And all right Scott’s a fighter pilot and John’s a genius and Virgil’s some sort of goddamn savant, but at least Alan can’t even tie his shoelaces yet so Gordon’s got one up on him. Gordon doesn’t even wear shoes. Doesn’t wear much of anything at all except teeny weeny trunks splattered red, white and blue.

Gordon won’t be a hero, won’t have a theory named after him, but what Gordon will have will be _his_.

Gordon’s going for gold.

His muscles burn and his hair turns green and he sweats chlorine into his sheets every night, but that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but the next millisecond, the turn, the cleanness of his touch. He can’t care about anything but his coach’s thumb hovering over the stopwatch and the crest of his fly because it’s coming. Gold. It’s coming, and it’s everything.

Everything.

—

Dad calls on Wednesdays at three. Alan calls at midnight just to hear him swear. He gets weekly updates on daring-do from Scott and a monthly serving of sarcasm and space babble from John.

Virgil calls because they tend to forget.

“You gonna come home, you think? Before?”

Virgil looks different, his floppy black hair cropped short, band shirts exchanged for some weird quasi military uniform. He’s still watching Gordon shovel food down his throat with an expression of disgusted awe, though, so some things never change.

“Dunno.” Gordon shrugs, mouth full. “Gotta keep training. Four months to go, can’t lose form now.”

“You should come, there’s – there’s a lot changed around here,” says Virgil, like that’s a reason. Then, when Gordon just chews at him in reply, “Dad built you a pool.”

And maybe that’s a reason, after all.

Cause sure, his dad’s never told him he _can’t_ , but Gordon’s been gone a long time, and he’s not sure he remembers the last time his dad told him he _could_.

—

Home’s not the farm anymore, or the ranch, or the townhouse in Manhattan. Home is some island a billion miles from anywhere, where huge portraits of his older brothers stare expressionlessly down at him and his shoes squeak on the super shiny floor, humidity making his tracksuit stick to his back. 

Gordon has only really spent a few weeks here, his training all taking place under the eagle eye of Uncle Sam and sponsored entirely by Old Glory, but he doesn’t remember it like this. 

The decor is still retro spy movie meets crazy billionaire with paranoia problems, and his bedroom is pretty much as he left it, but nothing else seems familiar at all. He’d left Tracy Two in a great cavernous hanger that would have been overkill even for one of dad’s crazy projects, Kyrano had rushed him past huge shadowy behemoths that suggested, pretty damn strongly, that Jeff Tracy is in the midst of another too easily financed midlife crisis.

“Please tell me he isn’t planning world domination,” Gordon had only half joked as they’d emerged into the brightness of the villa proper. “He’d look awful in lycra.”

Kyrano had glared at him, swirled back into the bowels of the island, and left him with Scott.

Scott is wearing lycra.

He’s sitting behind their dad’s desk, two high points of colour in his cheeks and his eyes bright with something Gordon can’t name as he pours over datasets. All he’s missing to complete the look is a fluffy white cat and a maniacal laugh.

“Hey. Hey.” Nothing. Scott mutters to himself as he sweeps his fingers through warning signs. “Scotty, hey!”

Scott looks up. Blinks. Blinks again.

“Gordon?”

“The one and only.”

Scott stands, still grossly tall, and moves to ruffle Gordon’s hair. It’s not as easy as it used to be, there’s an actual lift of his hand, and Gordon can’t help but feel satisfaction creep into his bones. 

“You grew.”

“Hear it happens.”

“Got a girlfriend?”

“Got a pillow.”

“Tragic.”

“That’s me.” Gordon throws his arm across his eyes and flops backwards onto the sofa. “Sacrificing everything in pursuit of a noble goal. Hold tight, beautiful people. Only three more months and I’m yours.”

He peeks out from beneath his elbow to see Scott standing over him, arms folded, lips twisted into something a bit like a fond smile. A bit. 

Something unpleasant settles in Gordon’s stomach.

“What are you doing desk work for? I thought you were out there –” He gestures to the cloudless sky beyond the glass wall. “Y'know. Saving the world.”

Scott opens his mouth, but then there’s a chime from the desk and Alan hollering from the staircase and Grandma crushing him to her chest, and Gordon is left to wonder.

—

Scott isn’t the only thing that’s strange.

There’s a fish tank in the corner, empty but for a little model sub from that docudrama he and John used to love to watch with Mom, but when he lays his hand on the glass it hums beneath his fingers and makes his teeth ache. 

John’s not here, replaced as resident super nerd by some guy they call Brains who makes John look dumb. Dad isn’t there, either, but that’s okay. Nor is Gordon, really.

He’s lived apart from his family for the best part of two years, he shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve changed. That’s he’s changed. But somehow, it doesn’t feel like _he_ has.

Alan’s finally learned to tie his laces but still never bothers, Virgil’s taken out his piercing, Grandma is being followed by a robot dog, but Gordon is still the same kid with the same dreams and he isn’t sure what anybody else’s dreams are anymore. Virgil’s in a uniform and Scott’s out of his and John is gone and Alan’s looking at him like he _knows_ stuff.

This is impossible, of course. Alan is an infant. This is the abiding certainty of Gordon’s life and he intends to prove it this evening with three rubber spiders and a trapeze but _whatever_.

It’s just that Gordon isn’t quite sure where he fits, just like he doesn’t know where to sit when holograms of the great and the good appear in his living room. Doesn’t quite know what to make of the way their eyes skip over him to rest on Scott, or Virgil, and where the hell is John, anyway?

“Top secret,” Alan says, all pre-teen smugness, “can’t tell you.”

“Dad’ll be home soon,” Virgil adds, ever the peacekeeper, “I’m sure he’ll tell you everything.”

Gordon’s not so sure and Scott says nothing at all except a vehement ‘no!’ when Gordon dares to suggest going for a swim. 

So much for the pool, then.

—

Night is falling and Gordon’s already ready for bed when the roar of engines fills the air and the whole family dart for the window, faces pressed against the glass. Gordon hovers behind them, unsure of his place, until Scott grabs him bodily by the elbow and drags him downstairs to where the deck leads down to the pool.

“Come on! You got to see this!”

It’s a thing to see, all right. The pool withdraws beneath the villa itself, leaving a great gaping hole in the earth into which a great silver plane descends, jets first. And Gordon remembers the TV-21 and his father’s fascination with speed and grace and more speed – it’s the one thing they have in common after all – but this, this is something else. 

She disappears into the ground, and the pool sweeps over her, only the sway of the water left as evidence. Scott turns to him with an almost hysterical glee.

“Did you see that!?”

Gordon would have pointed out that he’d have to have been dead blind and comatose not to have seen it, but Scott’s practically bouncing on his toes, his expression full of what Gordon recognises as real, true love.

“Isn’t she beautiful? Come on, come on, Dad’s gotta debrief and then –”

“Scott!” They both snap to attention, immediately turning to where their father stands, towering over both of them from the top of the stairs. “Debrief can wait. Let me see your brother.”

Scott darts off, probably to hump the shiny thing, and Dad approaches Gordon, his eyes shining, dirt on his cheek.

“What do you think of her, son?”

“I think you’ve safely guaranteed Scotty won’t be bringing you home any surprise grandbabies.”

Dad snorts, clapping Gordon on the shoulder and turning him back toward the pool. They head out across the deck together, Gordon barefoot in only his sleep shorts, Jeff in a uniform like Scott’s only gently singed.

“I’ve missed you. How’s training?”

Gordon half shrugs. “Wet. Good. Pretty tiring.”

Jeff looks him up and down with a critical eye “So I imagine. It looks good on you.”

Gordon stretches and grins. “No more noodle arms, right?”

Jeff blinks, and for a moment Gordon almost thinks he sees something like sadness in his eyes, but it’s soon gone and his dad’s turning him to face the pool again.

“Will it do? I know it’s not Olympic standard but we needed some room for the house and –”

“Dad,” he says, because his dad is rambling and his dad never rambles. “Dad what’s going on?”

Jeff looks down into the pool. The stars flicker into being in his reflection.

“Forest fire. Family home was cut off.”

“Your rescue thing. You saved them.”

Jeff looks at him, Gordon watches in the water as he schools his features, tightens his jaw. “This time."

"Scott and Virgil?”

“Are involved, yes.”

“And John?”

Jeff looks up then, up to the darkening sky, and points. “We built a satellite. It monitors distress calls from all over the world - and beyond.”

“Makes sense. Space case.”

“Play to your strengths, isn’t that what they say?”

“What about Alan?”

“Alan’s eleven, Gordon. Even my insanity has its limits.”

“And you built me a pool?”

“And I built you a pool. Is it – ” a breath where Gordon wouldn’t expect to hear one “is it all right?”

“All right?” Gordon turns to him and grins. “It’s perfect.”

Because okay, so it’s only a short course, and it occasionally has a supersonic plane blasting through it, but it’s a pool and it’s for him, and that’s better than Scotty’s super special plane. 

His dad’s clapping him on the back again and smiling and that’s better than any top secret technology. 

It makes a strange island full of strange things feel a little bit more like home.

Jeff’s off again already though, gesturing to the round building above the villa and going on about blast radius and Gordon’s content to just watch for a moment, to bask in that feeling for as long as it lasts. Then the subject changes.

“We’ll be in Cape Town for the opening ceremony, of course, and I’ve made arrangements to ensure we can all make your races. I’m sure it won’t shock you to hear Alan’s made t shirts and John’s bringing a banner. I hope it’s safe for television.”

His eyes snap to his dad’s.

“John’s coming?”

His dad’s eyebrows twitch. “You think he’d miss it? Gordon, none of us will miss this. Not for the world. And as you now know, I mean that quite literally.”

Gordon nods, mutely. There’s a build up of something in his chest. Lactic acid squeezing his heart. His dad takes pity.

“What about September? Are you still planning on marine biology?”

Gordon scuffs at the tile with his bare heel. This is a conversation he’s been avoiding for a long time, now. The after.

“Yeah. UCLA.”

“California?”

Gordon shrugs.

“You don’t seem keen? Sydney have an excellent program, do you –” Gordon feels more than hears the shudder in his dad’s exhale. “No, no Jeff stop it. You tell me, Gordy. What do you want to do?”

Gordon’s voice is never small, but it’s as close as it’s ever been. “Was thinking WASP.”

Both of his dad’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “The military? You?”

It’s not an unexpected reaction. Gordon scoffs. “You wound me, Dad. Maybe I have hidden depths.”

“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” his dad says, then he looks up, right up, to where the milky way swirls and John sits. “You’re not old enough.”

“Yeah, I know, I thought, college first - couple of years of credits and I can join as an officer.”

“You’re my son, you can join as whatever you damn well please.”

“Dad–”

“Sorry, sorry.” And his Dad’s looking into space and Gordon’s looking down at the water and it’s kinda always been like this, between them. Gordon suspects his dad hates it even more than he does.”You know I’ll support you, if that’s what you really want.”

Gordon finally follows his gaze, imagines John in the vacuum of space, alone with his books and his stars. He wonders if Dad had had this conversation with him, before sending him up there. “That sounds kinda like a don’t do it, Dad, I’m not gonna lie.”

“Can I be honest?” Gordon nods, because saying no seems kinda harsh, but his heart is thundering faster than after a sprint. “Gordon, when I designed International Rescue, I designed it for you boys. A legacy, I suppose. I wanted –” he shakes his head. “I’m getting to be a selfish old man.”

Gordon scowls. “You’re the least selfish man I’ve ever met. Pretty sure those people whose lives you saved today would agree.”

Jeff shakes his head.

“I want you to know,” he says, “that there will always be a place for you, here, with us, if you want it. But only if you want it.” A twitch of Jeff’s lips. “God knows, I could never make you anyway.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Then, a wicked grin pulling at the corner of his mouth, “Race you?”

A splash, a shout, laughter rings out into the night and hell it’s cheesy but it’s true; for a moment Gordon kinda feels like he’s already won.

—

The Olympics are due to start in June.

May, and his father dies.

Gordon flies home immediately, thirty thousand feet over Cape Town without even looking down.

He can’t.

He has a place in a legacy.


	2. Gordon (2)

An explosion hangs, frozen, in the middle of their living room, and they creep around it – Gordon and the people his father trusted – staring and eyes averted all at once.

In the distance someone is crying, wailing, and Gordon can’t tell from here if it’s Alan or Scott and he doesn’t really want to know. Doesn’t know what he’d do with the information if he did. Doesn’t know how to help anyone, least of all himself, and a fine rescue operative he’s gonna make.

Just standing there. Beached.

Not that anyone else is doing much better.

Brains, a little man with a terrible stutter and an IQ higher than every remaining Tracy combined, is muttering to himself, head in his hands, as though he can theorise his dad back to life. Kyrano looks fifty years older, his face gaunt and his hands shaking as he struggles to lift a teacup to his lips. Shock, Grandma had said, eyes fiercely bright and brandishing the teapot like a weapon. It’s shock. Shock doesn’t seem like the right sort of word to Gordon. Not big enough to encompass everything his father was and now suddenly, violently _isn’t_.

Kayo is back too, refusing to meet Gordon’s eyes and hovering over her father as if he might disappear into thin air if she dares to blink. 

Maybe he will. Nothing seems impossible to Gordon now, except maybe tomorrow.

“A bad business,” says the man Gordon doesn’t know, shaking his head. “Terrible, terrible.”

The man, British and with jowls to match, had arrived in a navy blue Bentley equipped with VTOL accompanied by a dour looking grey-haired man in a chauffeur’s hat and a solemn young girl who’s kept her hands neatly folded in her lap the entire time they’ve been there.

John is supposed to be coming to speak to them. Or Scott. Somebody who knows what to say. Somebody who knows why they’re here.

No one has appeared, and the teapot’s shaking in his grandmother’s hand. The wailing has faded to sobs. The dry, painful sort that come when the pain outweighs the ability.

“Most distressing.”

Understatement. Another Brit speciality.

“Excuse me,” he says in his best media voice, gently pitched, calm as can be, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

—

He retches over a cliff edge, nails digging into the dirt and knees ground raw against stone. Tears track their way over a grubby face and he rocks back into his heels, twists weeds through his fingers and tries to remember how to breathe the way his coaches taught him.

Yesterday. God, yesterday. A lifetime ago. Behind him he hears the scuffle of feet, and he scrubs at his eyes. He hasn’t seen a brother, yet. He can’t. He doesn’t –

He hasn’t any words for any of them.

He doesn’t need them yet. Yet. Because it’s the girl, shoving her way through the undergrowth, blue eyes bright, her lip between her teeth.

He looks up and she looks down and – oh.

And Gordon is broken and Gordon is wrecked. Hollowed out and mentally howling and about thirty seconds from launching himself into the ocean and letting it carry him away, but Gordon is also not _blind_. 

“Penelope,” she says, and some part of him takes that word and locks it away. Marks it for later, highlighted and underlined. “I’m so pleased to finally meet you. I’m just awfully sorry about the circumstances.”

She’s older than him, a bit. Not enough to make it weird or anything, but enough that he doesn’t quite know how to take the hand she rests on his shoulder or the look in her eyes.

“You’ve heard of me, then.”

“Your reputation precedes you,” she says, and then, “My father worked for your father. It’s my intention to work for you and your brothers.”

And there it is. The first outright admission of what Gordon’s known since that first, awful, moment. This is his life now. This island. The machines beneath. This girl.

“You an engineer?”

“Hardly,” she scoffs. “My duty is to smooth the way for International Rescue. To benefit the parts of the world that engines alone cannot reach.”

“Yeah? And how do you do that?”

“I have my ways.” She says it with the hint of a smile, and he oughtn’t like it – it ought to feel wrong. Gross, in this place of abject misery. But it doesn’t and he does and he tries one for himself.

His face creaks, but his heart lifts, just a tiny bit.

“Kayo will like you.”

“Everyone likes me.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and drops down next to him. “That’s the secret.”

“To what?”

She does smile then, and it’s warm. Warmer than the sun on his back. The warmest he’ll feel for a while “You’ll see.”


	3. Scott

His father had once said that Scott had adrenaline instead of blood. He’d sounded proud, at the time. _A real chip off the old block._

And Scott had smiled, because it was permission, wasn’t it? Permission to gorge himself on fast cars, fast planes, fast women. To live a young man’s dream and know that when he’d sated himself, he’d have a place ready and waiting at his father’s right hand. As certain as though he’d been carved from his rib, the two of them linked inextricably forever.

That part’s still true, of course. Except it means that when his father – when his father _left_ , he took half of Scott with him. He left behind the part that drinks, at least. That’s something. Small mercies.

God what Scott wouldn’t do for a small mercy.

Sleet is falling in New York, damp and heavy over last night’s snow, and it’ll be an ice rink out there later. Scott won’t be out in it though. Scott can’t see himself ever leaving this desk again. The news is out and the investors are terrified and the board is demanding and Scott can’t step foot on that island, not yet, so he’s surrounded himself with flashing datapads full of blurry figures, donned a tie, and locked the door. 

His personal comm flashes. A dozen messages he won’t answer. His father’s does, too. Those he can’t. The datapads blink amber and red and the stock market reels and his father’s –

His father’s secretary had called him _Mr Tracy_. 

Last week she was Abigail and he was Scott and he’d had a very different use for the black silk tie, but last week had been a lifetime ago. Last week Mr Tracy had been a nebulous character lying somewhere in Scott’s far distant future. A title to be passed down when he was grey haired himself and ready and Christ but he was never going to be ready for this. Never.

He can still hear Casey, yelling his father’s name. Can still feel the ice that had crawled up his spine and into his veins and left him hanging there, helpless, unable to even speak when John’s pale face had appeared over his father’s jumpseat. How he’d just sat there and watched his brother break.

He’d made John tell their grandmother. Made Virgil call Gordon. 

_Mr Tracy_ delegates.

He expects one day he’ll be sorry enough to feel ashamed.

—

Casey appears somewhere around dawn, datapad in hand. He doesn’t know how she bypassed the locked door and he doesn’t ask. She pulls up the chair on the other side of Mr Tracy’s desk, picks up the near empty bottle of scotch and peers critically at the dregs.

“Tracy.”

“Colonel.”

“This needs to stop.”

“What do you mean?”

She glares at him, the glare that strikes terror into the heart of raw recruit and seasoned soldier alike. Luckily or otherwise, Scott seems now to be beyond its reach.

“You look awful.” Scott has less than no desire to look himself in the eye right now, but he can feel the crease that’s worked its way between his eyebrows, can smell the alcohol on his own breath. He isn’t sure what sort of reply he’s meant to give her. She doesn’t wait for one. “Go home.”

“The business –”

“Has been running itself just fine while your father’s been busy elsewhere and you well know it.”

“I can’t –”

“Damn you can’t!” Casey shoves a pile of datapads to the side, lets them scatter across the floor in a cacophony of splintering glass, and shoves the one she’s holding directly under his nose. He blinks down at it, his bleary eyes struggling to focus. Words, not figures. His own name in bold, underlined, awaiting a signature. “This is where your duty lies, Tracy. Here.”

Something coalesces out of the haze. Alan’s name. Gordon’s. The words _age of majority_ and _in loco parentis_.

Fuck.

“Fuck.”

Casey sighs and drops back into the chair. “If you aren’t willing then your grandmother will take guardianship, but at her age –”

At her age there’s no guarantee she’ll see Alan reach eighteen, is what Casey means. Jokes on her, because right now Scott can’t imagine any of them existing from one hour to the next.

“It’s really necessary?”

“Your sixteen year old brother had a twenty minute introduction to a submersible and is now somewhere at the bottom of the South Pacific and refusing all calls to surface. What do you think?”

There’s a nasty little sting then, at the memory of his father presenting Brains with the vat of yellow paint. At the way he’d laughed off Brains’ suggestion of _c-camouflage, sir?_ Because _the whole world will see my boy coming regardless, don’t you fear._

But for all of there’s Dad in Scott there’s enough of Scott in Gordon for him to know to let him lie. At least no-one will have to drag Gordon up from the depths, he’ll rise when he’s good and ready.

Scott’s always needed dragging.

“Grandma sent you, didn’t she.”

Casey huffs. It’s not a denial. “Someone had to.” She nods at the still flashing comm, the unanswered messages evidence enough of her point. “Will you take some advice, Scott? From an old friend?”

“Sure.” Small mercies. 

“Your father was an – an incredible man. I don’t need to tell you that. I have no doubt that in time you will be just as impressive. But right now, there’s only one part of his legacy that matters. Don’t you agree that that’s where your duty lies?”

Scott looks at the datapads still flashing their figures from cracked screens, thinks of Alan, small and frightened, his hands fisted in the edge of John’s sweater. Thinks of his father and a vat of yellow paint, of Virgil leaving oil stains on silent piano keys. Of all the Alan’s and Gordon’s and Virgil’s and John’s and goddamn it all the _Scott’s_ who feel this way every damn day. Of the way his father had unveiled One to him as though she was goddess and Scott baptised her faithful servant. He thinks of duty, and for a second he tastes adrenaline.

(Years later he’ll realise he missed her point, but it’s too late then. Maybe it always was.)

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah.” 

And signs.


	4. John

John Tracy deals in numbers.

Sometimes they're simple things; the likelihood of getting a nap, the chances of finishing lunch, the effective half life of a vitamin patch after thirty six hours without fresh food. 

The relative death rate of scurvy in the under 30s. 

Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're the cost benefit analysis of one life over another, which brother can do most good where. The many, or the few. Life, or death.

John Tracy deals in numbers for a _reason_.

Below him, far far below, morning has broken. Australia is huge and warm under his feet, New Zealand snug under a blanket of cloud, and Tracy Island lies, just a blue spot invisible to the naked eye, waiting.

His brothers are nothing like the numbers. He cannot program a variable into Scott and expect a logical outcome, no matter how many times he's tried. He can't code the sincerity of Virgil's heart any more than he could teach EOS to tapdance. Give Gordon a list of probabilities and he'd force the impossible just to throw out the pattern. And laugh about it. Bastard.

But like the numbers they are concrete, certain. Pins in a piece of paper that draw his attention back down to that same blue spot rotation after rotation after situation. Keeping him grounded, connected, part of something greater than himself. Than Five. Than International Rescue.

Without them he sometimes worries he'd be consumed by the theoretical, that he'd become part of his own code. Some days -- some days that doesn't feel like such a bad idea. Those are the days when the numbers fail him, when he fails _them_. When the comms go quiet and the alarms go off and _John? Sweetheart, come down_. Those are the days when it's all just a bit _much_. When the risks outweigh the benefits and he re-runs it over and over, a sim beyond his eyelids, until his teeth ache and his eyes burn.

There have been a few of those days lately, the sort that give Scott another grey. Force John to build another sim. Rerun the numbers. Relive the risk.

So maybe he's a little jealous of EOS, sometimes. Of the simplicity and the comfort of her certainty. He doesn't tell his brothers. He doesn't tell _her_ , either. EOS does not need the encouragement.

John does.

"Again."

EOS flashes, amber judgement, but does as he asks. The trajectory of the Zero X shoots across the commsphere, settles in the mass of stardust over his right shoulder. It doesn't explode this time. It's a start.

"Status?"

"The Zero X will be able to maintain life at current status for up to three point six months. Oxygen scrubbing --"

"Again."

"John, this exercise serves no purpose --"

" _Again_ , EOS."

The hopeless, lifeless Zero X fades away to nothing. John fixes his attention on the south Pacific, on that little spot of blue. Waits.

"On the balance of probabilities I can perform this task four thousand and sixteen times without significant deviation."

"Better make it four thousand and seventeen then."

"My _processors_ are overheating." 

"That's a physical impossibility."

"It's a figure of _speech_."

"EOS, _please_." He takes a great, shuddering breath, scrubs his glove across gritty, red rimmed eyes. "I need to know -- I need to know if there's any _point_."

"There is one hundred percent probability that this exercise is pointless," she begins, then pauses, considering. "You are not referring to the exercise."

"No," he says. "No, I'm not."

Because the truth is -- the numbers don't lie, but the numbers can't know. They can't know about the force of nature that was Jeff Tracy. They don't take into consideration a man's heart, his soul, his utter bullheadedness. John can't run his father through a computer any more than he can his brothers. He can't, but he _has to_.

He'd stake his own life a hundred times, willingly, _happily_ , but he can't stand to watch his brothers risk theirs. Not again. Not with Gordon half fit and Scott half crazed. Not when Virgil just _believes_ so wholeheartedly, even though his evidence and reasoning are sketchy enough to make John's stomach hurt.

Not _Alan_. He can't risk Alan.

Not even for his dad. His extraordinary, ridiculous --

He wonders if his father ran the numbers, before. If it would have made any difference if he had. Physics versus Jeff Tracy, and only a fool would bet their money on the universe.

"Again."

The Zero X shoots in front of him once more, a green-blue streak, and John Tracy deals in numbers, not gods. He believes in absolutes and certainties and _physics_ , but maybe this -- this might be about faith. About _Dad_.

John’s never been the fool before.

He lets himself reach out. Runs his fingers through the conn trails, closes his eyes, and _tries_.


	5. Virgil

Time spent alone in the villa is hard to come by, not that Virgil generally minds, or, in fact, is technically alone now. He’s not. Scott is here, or at least he’s out there, just beyond the picture window, jetpacking his way up and down the huge skeleton of the new Zero X and giving Brains a hernia in the process. The Mechanic is somewhere down in the bowels of the lab running over a few final figures, so Kayo’s almost certainly down there too. She likes him, he can tell, and for all her fierce faces Virgil knows that she above all of them is probably the quickest to forgive a man who’s suffered at her uncle’s hands. Family matters to Kayo, and family blood is best kept on family hands.

If the Hood tries to come for the Mechanic again, it won’t be a Tracy boy who leaps to his defence. The women have that more than covered.

Speaking of which.

Grandma is on shopping duty, out on the mainland, two overactive and over wrought blond grandsons sent to, ostensibly at least, keep her company and help with the heavy lifting. So why she’s on the comm to Virgil, her brows all puckered up, he isn’t quite sure. She’d caught him halfway through setting up his palette, but instead of signing off she’s lingering like a pale blue ghost and setting all his colours off wrong.

“You sure you’re alright up there on your own, kid?”

“I’m fine,” he says, lifting an eyebrow. “You sure you didn’t mean to call John? Mine’s hardly the loneliest spot in the cosmos.”

“I worry.”

This is new, the fretting. Grandma’s never been one to outwardly fret before, not unless the situation really called for it. Virgil alone with a paintbrush is definitely not a fret worthy situation.

“Everything’s fine, Grandma. I do do worse things than hang out in my own house you know. Daily.”

“I know. Just–” she wrinkles her nose, eyes flickering over to something out of frame, “take it easy, won’t you?”

He waves the brush as her. “I’m trying!”

“Well, make sure you try hard.” She sniffs. “The lot of you will be greyer than me by the time this is over.”

“Speaking for Scott?”

“Too damn late for Scott.” There’s a ruckus somewhere beyond her holocomm and Virgil watches as several rolls of toilet paper go flying behind her head.”You sure you’re okay?”

A familiar wail that speaks of sore losers and sorer winners echoes around the lounge, and Virgil grins. “You sure _you’re_ okay?”

“Peachy. _Behave_!” She cuts the comm just as she grabs a passing yellow streak by the back of the collar, and brains him with a toilet roll.

It’s a relief to hear the hooting and hollering, honestly. They’ve all been getting a little testy, lately. Stressed. Worried. Fiercely determined and scared out of their minds. It’s only natural. To be expected. Not that _any_ of this is expected. Wished for and hoped for and prayed for, sure, but likely? Not in the least. So he doesn’t blame Scott for being, if not unkind, at least ungentle. Nevertheless the fact remains that neither Gordon nor Alan have ever been any good at holding their hearts anywhere but right in their outstretched palms, and it would probably be best if they managed to bring their dad back to an island with all his sons on speaking terms. 

So it’s better, really, with John safe in space, to send the boys and Grandma out to terrorise minimum wage employees and to leave the sort of frenetic hurricane of anxious energy that dogs Scott’s every step to be contained, more or less safely, by a bottle of Scotch, a very fast plane, and Virgil.

Nobody has thought to save Virgil. 

This is – not new.

Once upon a time, in a life before IR and orphanhood and fancy private islands, Virgil had taken a bit of a pop psychology course. Just half a credit toward his engineering degree, but it had sounded interesting and his dad had been mid-mid-life-crisis and it had seemed like it might be useful, somewhere down the line. And it has been, to a point. He knows his role.

He’s the Good Boy, the Caretaker to Scott’s Golden Child and John’s Lost Boy and Gordon’s Clown and Alan’s Mascot. He knows it, and he’s good at it – insomuch as anyone is _good_ at being dysfunctional – but that doesn’t mean he always _likes_ it.

It’s _hard_.

So he doesn’t much mind the alone time, such as it is. Not right now, not when even his vast and well curated reserves of patience are starting to stretch thin.

Alone time means he can paint without fear of a brother judging the tilt of their father’s eyebrows or the exact blue-grey of his eyes, play without the guilt of a missed memory triggering yet another explosion of emotion far too poorly contained. It means he can breathe, just a tiny bit easier, without the weight of four brothers and one grandmother and a sister and a genius or two sitting on his chest and demanding his attention. It means, for a moment, he can just be.

Drink an actually hot coffee. Have another go at those eyebrows. Mix another shade of blue. Play another half-written concerto with alarms scored all through. Have another go at saving something of himself, maybe, though from what or from whom he’s never entirely sure.

He’ll figure it out, eventually. He keeps trying.


	6. Alan

The roundhouse sits on a lifeless rocky outcrop where any plant life that struggles into existence here is soon blasted to smithereens whenever Three launches. The space below, between the roundhouse and the villa proper, is covered in lush greenery and shaded by trees. Somewhere down there Virgil is crashing through the undergrowth like a bear with a sore head, bellowing Alan’s name into the night.

Alan doesn’t answer.

Instead he sits on the cliff edge with his legs dangling. His heels drum against the scorched earth while he stuffs gum into his mouth. Piece after piece of it until his cheeks are full and his jaw aches. Until he can’t even speak even if he wanted to, even if Virgil does find him and gives him another twenty minute lecture on the dangers of aspartame. Not like he’d want to listen to anything Alan had to say, anyway. Kind of an ongoing issue that, because the thing is – the thing _is_ – is that Alan has kinda always had to bite his tongue when it matters. Alan’s the _baby_. Alan needs _protecting_. Alan’s busy playing video games while the grown ups plan his entire life for him and –

And Alan has _always_ been an orphan. He has nothing but the vaguest of sense memories of his mother, and his _father_ – in his mind his Dad is Scott, only bigger. One hundred feet tall and grizzled, made entirely of heroism and dressed in a shirt that would make Gordo blush. A semi mythical creature made up of fairytales and falsehoods that’s been held up as the ideal since – since _forever_.

The worst thing, the thing that’s making his eyes itch and his jaw spasm, is that for a little while he’d kinda sorta maybe… made it.

Alan Tracy. Astronaut. Adventurer. _Hero_.

Last level stuff, and all before he’s old enough to drink. But then he’d had to come up against the final boss, and it just had to be _Scott._

_“No! You can’t!”_

_Brains, caught and flushed in the holographic glow, had almost looked apologetic. Alan had felt suddenly sick._

_His ship. Turned into some sort of booster for the gargantuan monster Brains and the Mechanic have created. And his life kinda flashes in front of his eyes and there’s really not a lot of it but what there is, is_ her _._

_“A-alan, don’t be concerned I –”_

_“Brains! I need – we need our ‘birds! What if they’re damaged? What if –”_

_“I assure you the utmost care has been taken in designing –”_

_“Can’t you design a new one!? Why do you need Three? Can’t you –”_

_“I-I’m afraid there isn’t time –”_

_“But the risk –”_

_“N-nothing is without risk, Alan.”_

_“Enough.” And Alan had never really had a father, but he’d always had Scott. Until then. “There’s nothing to discuss! All the 'birds are necessary. There’s no debate.”_

_“But –”_

_“But nothing!” Scott had narrowed his eyes, got that face on him that sent younger brothers running for their lives faster than Grandma’s pot roast. “Go to bed, Alan. You’re tired ”_

_He’s_ tired! Like Scott isn’t jittering his way around the island with panda eyes and a three day beard. But sure, Alan’s tired. All because he doesn’t want – doesn’t –

“You chew like a cow.”

Alan doesn’t bother to look down at his watch. His eyes are full of grit and anyway the sky’s way more interesting than anything John might have to say. Bright and infinite and his, sometimes. _His_.

“Alan? Listen, Al, it’s ok to be scared. We’re all scared. Scott’s terrified.”

Alan grunts. From the corner of his eye he sees John's hologram concede the point with a nod.

“Okay so Scott’s maybe a bad example, he’s as fuelled by fear as Virgil is by caffeine. But still.” John pauses. Alan spits out the lump of gum and launches it in the general direction of Virgil’s clomping.

“That’s littering.”

“Don’t tell Gordon.”

“Alan –”

“I’m not _frightened_!” He’s too loud. Virgil changes direction, more purpose in his stride. Shit. “I’m not. Not of going.” And that’s an admittance in itself he guesses, and Virgil’s on his way for an earnest heart to heart. Better get it out and over and done with.

“What, then?”

Alan turns his face up to the sky as the blanket of stars shot through by a single meteor. A wishing star. John had scoffed at the concept, once. Alan should scoff at it now. He doesn’t. Instead he digs his fingers into the ash he leaves in his wake and imagines himself here, day after day, caught in the flare of his 'bird. His 'bird who won’t be his any longer. Or worse, he’ll be sent to college, stuck in some shared room where he hears the sirens and watches the news and just – 

“Nothing,” he says. “I’m scared of nothing.”

(He means it.)


End file.
